Waiting
by annaliesegrace
Summary: Waiting was something Natasha Romanoff did not excel at. One shot about what Nat was thinking while waiting for Clint to wake after their fight on the heli-carrier during Avengers.


Title: Waiting

Author: Annaliesegrace

Rating: K

Summary: Natasha sucked at waiting, especially when it involved her partner.

AN: Just a little one-shot about what Nat was thinking about while waiting for Clint to come to in the medbay during Avengers.

Reviews are love, feel free to leave one. Enjoy!

* * *

Waiting was something Natasha Romanoff did not excel at, it was - quite possibly - the only thing she _didn't_. Even when she was following a mark, watching, she was constantly plotting out all the options, all the ways she could kill them. Memorizing patterns of behavior and mannerisms and whatever else she decided would be useful.

But this? This was hell. This was staring at the still-prone form of her partner, waiting for him to wake the hell up.

It left her entirely too much time to think about things. Think about how quickly this had all gone downhill. Had it been only five days earlier that she had talked to him on the phone? Clint had been bitching about how exceptionally boring babysitting a bunch of scientists and a blue cube had been.

That said, he was damn good at his job – took it seriously - and he had all the patience in the world, so he would have sat and watched that fucking cube until the end of the world (almost had, really), even if it did bore him to tears. Only to her would he admit how he was ripping through the books he had brought with him and ask could she please send him a few more.

She'd decided that she was going to ship him a Kindle instead - when she returned from Russia.

But instead of coming back to the New York base and sending him his gift, she'd been forced to deal with a demi-God who'd decided to scramble Clint's brains and use him to help take over the world.

Her eyes flicked to his still closed ones and a heavy feeling settled in her chest. She needed him to wake up, Natasha needed to confirm that the brief flash of the Clint she had seen on the catwalk, the one who had muttered her name in confusion not thirty minutes ago was permanent and she had her partner back.

Natasha desperately needed him back. She couldn't handle losing both Phil and Clint on the same day…hell, within three hours of each other. Because if those eyes opened and they weren't the familiar grey she had come to associate with comfort and home and instead were sickening ice blue, she would be forced to put a bullet in his head. And in that moment, she wasn't sure she could.

_No. No fucking way._

He wasn't going out this way. _They_ weren't going out this way. Clint was too damn stubborn and she wouldn't allow it.

The two of them had weathered far too much for her to have to take him out on the heli-carrier. This was _Clint, _the man who had spared her life so long ago in Brazil. Who had put his ass right in the line of fire with SHIELD by doing so. And who'd had her back the better part of seven years.

Placing her elbows on her knees, Natasha scrubbed her face with her hands, frustration starting to seep into her tired posture.

"C'mon Clint…please be in there…"

* * *

Eight Years Earlier - Brazil

Something was not right.

He hadn't been made; Clint Barton was far too good for that to happen. But there was something off about his target - the one he had been following for nearly six days now. The Black Widow had been hard to locate at first, but once he got his sights on her, Barton had no trouble keeping her there.

Which was what had his senses tingling.

Clint had been instructed to follow her, gather whatever intel he could, and then eliminate the target with little fuss. The details of how he would go about it were up to him – as they usually were – SHIELD gave Clint far more leeway in completion of his missions than most. Came with being the best they had.

So in typical Clint fashion, he had methodically followed her, keeping a distance from the target. She'd changed hotels three times as she moved through the country, moving closer to her target a little bit every day. And every day she did "touristy" things, window shopping but never buying, hitting all the local hotspots, even going so far as to send postcards to somewhere. Mixed in with all this activity Clint noted she was slowly circling her mark, like a shark circling a meal. Until one morning she had stood up just in time to crash into him at a coffee shop, spilling her coffee all over his t-shirt. Clint had damn near groaned at the cliché nature of it all, but it was effective. Helping matters was the short, low cut summer dress she was wearing. After her mark had disappeared into the bathroom and cleaned up they'd stayed at the café another hour, chatting outdoors.

Normally Clint wouldn't have cared less who her mark was, Romanov was the archer's concern, but there was something about the man's appearance that clicked in his memory, so that night (after ensuring she was ensconced in her own hotel) he had called Coulson and asked who the man was.

"Trafficker." Coulson was unusually short with the answer, which had Clint on alert.

"Of what, Coulson?"

"Humans, Barton."

His response was almost immediate; Clint had little patience for those who bartered in people. "Permission to wait to terminate until her job is complete?"

"You're bothering to ask? That's new."

Clint grinned, confident his handler knew he was doing it. "Turning over a new leaf, I suppose."

The other man sighed then said, "Whatever. Permission granted. But you've only got thirty-six hours; we have another mission in the hopper, so if she isn't done by then - you need to be."

"It'll be soon, she's been circling for damn near a week, finally made contact today."

"This one's taking longer than it should, Barton. Get it done."

"Yes, sir."

After shucking his clothes and taking a cool shower (it was hotter than hell in Argentina), Clint tried to get a couple hours sleep but something Phil said kept rolling through his head.

"_This one's taking longer than it should…"_

It was. Any other mission and Clint would have given up on the intel by now and taken out the target, especially a target with this high a profile and a knack for getting onto SHIELD's radar.

Staring at the ceiling above his bed, he tried to examine the why.

Certainly she was beautiful, but he had killed target just as, if not moreso.

Clint had read her file…maybe the fact her past was similar to his. In that they were both forced to make their own way at a young age, taken advantage of by people who purported to be helping them. Though in the Widow's case, it was more helping themselves by helping her become a better killer.

That and he had noticed something odd about her actions these six days. She took unnecessary risks in getting close to the target, engaging him, instead of simply taking him out quickly. Despite moving hotels three times (as he would have done to avoid being in one place too long), at each she was engaging with the staff…memorable even. Assassins were not memorable; they were average, boring, forgettable. It's what kept them alive.

Sitting straight up, Clint realized what was going on. He _had_ been made, just not in the way he'd expected.

It took him exactly a minute and a half to decide what to do and how to carry it out.

Little did he know it would change the rest of his life. And hers.

After she left the hotel for a prearranged lunch with the mark, Clint made his way up to the roof then swung down onto her balcony and easily picked the crappy lock on the sliding door. To be fair, the room was on the top floor of a fourteen story hotel, so the expectation that someone would rappel in from the roof was unlikely, so the quality of lock was unsurprising.

What did surprise him was that she had made no effort to fortify the door. He would have.

It only confirmed to him what he already suspected. Yeah, Phil would be pissed, but when wasn't the man crabby about something? Although the archer knew part (ok, all) of his handlers eternally cranky mood had an awful lot to do with him and his frequent…off the book behavior. But in the end Clint was confident the other man would back his play. Because Phil had done something similar for him not so long ago.

Though Clint would likely pay for this for a good long while.

Looking around he took in the suite. It was two rooms, a generously sized living area (where the balcony doors were) and only slightly smaller bedroom with enormous bath. It took him nearly two hours to go through the rooms and decide on a plan of action. Smiling to himself, he worked his way back up to the roof and waited.

_Thump._

_Thump._

_Thump._

The noise woke Natalia from a deep sleep and she was instantly on alert, sitting up in bed and pulling the small handgun she kept under the pillow out, pointing it at the source of the noise - a figure that was sitting in a chair at the end of the bed. The full moonlight that filtered through the windows illuminated him just enough that she could make out a man on the shorter side with strong features, muscled biceps and sandy brown hair.

And he was tossing an apple into the air repeatedly…that's what had woken her, the thump when the fruit landed in his meaty palm before being tossed up again.

_How'd he get so close without waking me? _She thought but kept her face neutral; it was a rare day that someone got the drop on her.

"Who the fuck are you?" she hissed, keeping the gun pointed directly at him. While he sat rather causally in the chair, there was still a tense air about him; like he was on guard.

"Took you long enough to wake up," he said and took a big bite of the apple, chewing with a half grin on his face.

"How the hell did you get in here?" she now asked; the front door into the suite was locked tight and had an alarm on it of her own making. There was no way he had gotten in that way.

He swallowed and pointed the apple at her. "Balcony door, terrible lock by the way, and I'm rather disappointed in your security measures – or lack thereof, I suppose. Seems like a pretty blatant entry point."

Clint watched her face carefully. It was impassive, giving away nothing. But he sensed unease in her and the archer had to resist grinning.

"Who the fuck are you?" she asked again, voice icy.

"Well, I guess it's only fair I introduce myself," he said and took another bite of the apple before tossing it over his shoulder through the doorway behind him, successfully landing the uneaten half into a trashcan that was in the living space a solid twenty feet behind him and to the left. Without looking. Something in her was impressed with the aim. "Agent Clint Barton of SHIELD."

The gun wavered just slightly. Of all the agencies and people she had angered, it was SHIELD that had found her first.

Then he leaned forward, speaking again lowly, "But you can call me Hawkeye."

Recognition of his call sign crossed her face along with just a flash of fear. But as soon as it was there it was gone and the gun steadied its aim on his chest.

"You've come to kill me." She said it so calmly, so matter-of-fact that for just a moment Clint actually felt bad for her.

He shrugged. "That's up to you." Before she could respond he spoke again, "Why did you engage the target?"

The question surprised her and she just barely got out, "What?"

"The target, the man you spilled coffee on yesterday? Why engage him?"

It was her turn to shrug. "Seemed like…fun."

"You risked exposing yourself for fun? No, not buying it. Try again, Widow."

The way he said _Widow _had the hair on the back of her neck standing up. Because it was said so…casually, as if he didn't know how very lethal she could be. But based on his still on guard posture, he certainly did.

Instead of answering she held his gaze, they were still in the dark but her eyes had adjusted to note that his were an unusual shade of gray. And there was something behind those eyes, something very familiar; not that she had met him before, certainly not. But somehow she knew they were similar people.

When her silence stretched into several minutes, he spoke again. "You want out Natalia-"

"How-"

"-You've gotten sloppy. And it's intentional, you were practically begging for someone to come here and take you out. Maybe not me, but someone else you pissed off." Then he leaned in closer to her. "I've been in this business long enough to recognize when someone is burnt out."

The gun lowered just barely, her eyes still locked on his.

"So I've come with an offer."

"What kind of offer?" she asked.

He grinned. "Lower the gun and I'll tell you."

She did.

* * *

Heli-Carrier, Present Day

A grunt came from the man on the bed and Natasha scooted to the edge of the chair, anxious. Her wait was over.

Then he started straining against the restraints, the muscles in his arms bulging as he did and shaking his head as if to clear it.

"Clint?"

No response from her partner, instead he continued to make fists and pull, attempting to free himself. Then another good head shake and he looked at her, eyes open.

They were grey.

Relief flooded her. _Thank God_.

"Clint…it's ok. You're ok."

Another couple head shakes and the confusion that had been there when he first opened his eyes was gone.

"Nat…"

"You're gonna be ok..."

END


End file.
